Does anyone make a reliable external hard drive

Account Profile. Sign Out. Photo-Illustration: retailers. Tags: the strategist electronics computers and tablets video games recommended by experts More. Most Viewed Stories. My Honeymoon by Backpack through Montenegro. The Dr. More Stories. Although you can find negative reviews for every drive complaining about an unexpected failure or incompatibility with a computer, we selected models that kept such reviews to a minimum. Assessing negative customer reviews has its shortcomings. For one, people are more likely to post a review when they have a problem.

Also, because of the limited information available in some reviews, it can be hard to differentiate between hardware failures and software issues or user errors that could cause problems with a drive. Looking at the proportion of reviews, rather than the totals, helped us account for that.

But all the drives shared the same basic complaints no matter which one we looked at: All had reports of failure spanning anywhere from day one to a few years in.

Still, we used the information in owner reviews to the best of our ability to weed out drives that seemed especially unreliable. In our real-world transfer tests, the Toshiba Canvio Flex consistently performed faster than the other portable drives we tested. All the drives in our test group were rated for the latest, USB 3. But each of the portable drives other than the Canvio Flex had at least one major shortcoming in our testing: The Toshiba Canvio Gaming 4 TB failed to perform three of our initial benchmark tests in a row, the LaCie Mobile Drive 5 TB took nearly 10 times as long on both the large- and small-file read tests, and the Seagate Backup Plus Slim 2 TB took roughly five times as long as the others on the small-file write test.

In addition to consistently being the fastest drive we tested, the Canvio Flex is at this writing the cheapest per terabyte. Note that the Canvio Flex maxes out at 4 TB, which should be enough to back up most laptops a few times over or to hold large media libraries. Most other drives have a two-year warranty.

When we looked at Amazon customer reviews regarding reliability, the Canvio Flex had a lower proportion of one-star drive-failure complaints than the competition did. But there are always outliers, which is why we recommend that you use a cloud backup service in conjunction with your external drive to protect your most important data. The only other drive we tested that came with both kinds of cables was the LaCie Mobile Drive, which we dismissed for other reasons.

Like other portable drives, however, the Canvio Flex is small enough that you can more easily tuck it away in tighter spaces than a bulky desktop drive. The Toshiba Canvio Flex came out on top in our portable hard drive tests, but compared with the desktop hard drives, it was still a bit slower. An external desktop hard drive is great for those working more regularly from their external drives or transferring large files frequently.

Although it requires a free outlet for its power supply and is bulkier than our portable pick, the Toshiba Canvio Flex, this desktop model is noticeably faster at transferring all kinds of data. Seagate gives you a two-year warranty for the Backup Plus Hub; most drives we looked at had two or three years of coverage. This model also has a relatively low percentage of one-star Amazon complaints related to drive failure. Some external hard drives lie flat, but the Backup Plus Hub can stand upright like a book on a shelf, taking up a little less space on a desk.

And people who want the smallest, most discreet option would be better off with our portable pick, anyway. Get it if you want a hard drive for your desktop and the Seagate Backup Plus Hub is out of stock, or if you need a capacity larger than 10 TB.

The Seagate Expansion drive performed fine in our large-file transfer tests but had the slowest speeds of any desktop drive we tested in our small-file transfer tests.

It also disconnected itself from our PC without warning in the midst of testing and failed to connect again afterward. Although the Fantom Drives Gforce 3 Pro is a 7, rpm drive, its transfer speeds were mediocre. We dismissed the Fantom Drives Gforce 3 because it cost more than the Pro model at the time of our research and offered a slower rotations-per-minute speed.

Compared with our new picks, it had slower transfer speeds across the board, and it took significantly longer to perform Time Machine backups on macOS.

It weighs just over a half-pound and is just a half-inch thick, which makes it easy to slip into most bags or even a pocket in a pinch. In order to step up the Mac theme, the metal case matches the look of typical silver-hued Mac computers.

Why it made the cut: Firmware tweaks keep this drive running all the time to serve the needs of data-hungry consoles, making it the best external hard drive for gaming.

It also works with PCs. The design offers several color options, which allows users to choose a hue that matches their gaming setup. This is ultimately a fairly barebones drive, which is what you want in this situation. Why it made the cut: This super-secure drive has a built-in keypad and military-grade encryption to keep data safe. The case itself is sealed with tough epoxy, so anyone trying to physically get into the device will have a very hard time.

The wear-resistant keypad on the front lets users type in a code to unlock the device. LED indicators also show when the drive is connected, secure, and unlocked. There are even backup security measures. For instance, if a bad actor tries to use a brute force attack which rapidly tries many different access codes in succession , the drive can self-destruct and leave the data onboard useless.

It only weighs half a pound, but your capacity options are limited and the drive itself looks rather dated. You should realistically expect to replace your hard drives between three and five years.

That may sound conservative, but hard drives have moving parts that break down over time. If you only have a small amount of data to backup, an SSD will offer faster transfers and no mechanical breakdowns. Many portable drives also offer moderate amounts of storage for reasonable prices.

You may not need the biggest, fastest, or most secure drive in the world, so picking the best option for your needs can save you money, space, and hassle.

His past bylines include Rolling Stone, Engadget, Men's Journal, GQ, and just about any other publication that has ever written about gadgets. He collects vintage cameras, eats pizza, and hopes you won't go looking at his Tweets even though the link is down there. An exclusive sale means you can get the Apple AirPods Pro for much less. Sign up to receive Popular Science's emails and get the highlights. Written By Stan Horaczek.